Q and A with Vijay Mallya
At Silverstone Adrian scored his sixth consecutive points scoring position and brought the team's top ten finishing record to nine out of ten races. You must have been happy with that result?
I think Adrian did an outstanding job and also Tonio as well, given the circumstances. Adrian drove superbly, and to keep Vettel at bay for 10 laps when he was so much quicker, was a great achievement. Unfortunately Vettel squeezed past right at the end and we were knocked down a position, but to be racing the pace-setting car is very encouraging and a sign of how mature both Adrian and the engineering team have become. Similarly, Tonio started 20th and drove brilliantly as well, particularly after his change to the soft tires. Even Alonso, who is a pretty aggressive driver, couldn't get past him. I think if he had not got held up in the early stages, we could have had a double points finish. We started 11th and 20th on the grid, so to finish up eighth and 11th is a pretty credible achievement and one that sets us up for this next double header of Germany and Hungary.
Force India has sometimes had problems in qualifying. What are you doing to address that to give a better starting platform for the race?
We have struggled a little in qualifying for various reasons, but we are improving and learning all the time and I hope that we'll see a qualifying performance in Hockenheim that is more representative of the actual pace of the car. We need to put the whole package together now from the start of the weekend to the finish. We're going well but the other teams are also giving us a good run for our money so we need to optimize every single area of performance.
Any thoughts on the next race at Hockenheim?
If you look at what we presume to be the strengths and weaknesses of the car, Hockenheim is not as ideal as Spa or Monza. Having said that, it's Adrian's home race, and we are going to give it everything that we have. There are no dramatic updates, some tweaks to the rear wing and the rear suspension but I hope we'll hold position relative to where we were in Silverstone. If we can get both cars in the top ten in qualifying that will set us up very well for the race and I hope get another double points finish.